What do you get when you cross free-solo climbing and a bouldering competition with an Olympic swimming pool and three-two beer?

The Psicobloc Masters competition in Park City, Utah — an outrageous contest where the world's best climbers go hard, go fast and take the biggest falls you've ever seen.

Without a rope.

Psicobloc is a European term that means "psycho bouldering." One peek at the 55-foot climbing wall poised above the water and you'll understand why the term "psycho" is apropos.

Last Friday, 16 women and 16 men battled it out above the swimming pool, climbing two at a time, side-by-side on identical routes. Forget the arbitrary rules and confusing numbers of other comps. This one's easy for everyone to understand: Whoever climbs highest, first, wins.

And for every competitor who starts up the wall, there's a thrilling — SPLASH! — finale, when they jump off the top or fall trying to get there. It's not exactly safe, either, which is why there were four EMTs, two lifeguards and an ambulance standing by.

During the qualifying round Thursday, Isaac Caldiero whipped off the wall like a gymnast, but he landed like a lemming. In the middle of the overhang 30 feet up, he boldly leapt for the next set of holds. He stuck them long enough for his feet to fly up behind him, but when they did, he lost grip and went flying.

His body continued to rotate in a front flip, but before he could make it 360 degrees he smacked the water with his back and face. One of his eardrums ruptured on impact.

Advertisement

Many consider rock climbing an "extreme sport" of the same ilk as seriously crazy stuff like BASE jumping and downhill mountain bike racing. No wonder people want to watch climbers climb. Sadly, I can only imagine their disappointment when they realize how utterly boring it is to witness. As a spectator, sport rock climbing is akin to watching traffic lights cycle from red to green to yellow and back again.

Chris Weidner, Wicked Gravity

Even fast climbers appear to take forever. A couple thousand feet in a day is a lightning pace for a rock climber, yet athletes in almost every other sport cover that distance in two or three minutes. I walk that far to and from the bar on an average night out.

What's worse, the better a climber is, the more mind numbing they are to watch. Who cares if they're pulling some of the hardest moves a human has ever made if it looks like they're climbing a ladder?

Enter Psicobloc, where a combination of difficulty, speed and fear will leave an audience of climbing virgins and obsessed lifers equally enthralled.

This year, Boulder's own Daniel Woods advanced to the final round against Canadian Sean McColl. For these guys, the 5.13b route was so easy that it became a sprint to the top. The closest thing I've ever seen to this match-up is two squirrels racing up a tree. McColl latched the final hold a hair faster than Woods, topping out in a record-setting 42 seconds.

Alex Puccio, of Boulder, made it to semis but a surprise speedster, 16-year-old Claire Buhrfeind, of Texas, proved a split-second faster. McColl and Buhrfeind each went home with $5,000 as this year's Psicobloc Masters champions.

I was lucky enough to sit poolside and comment for the live online broadcast with Brian Runnells. It was the most fun I've had on the job since 1992, when I was a dancing clam in Seattle's Seafair Parade.

The beauty of Psicobloc is that it's competitive but not too serious. It's more a celebration of climbing than anything else. Ultimately, if anything can advance our sport, it's Psicobloc because, frankly, it finally makes climbing worth watching.

Local duo joining overseas exhibition excursionFilippo Swartz went to Italy, where his mother was born and he spent the first year or so of his life, every summer until he had to stick around to be a part of summer football activities for the Longmont High School team. Full Story

MacIntyre says the completed project will be best in Pac-12There were bulldozers, hard hats, mud, concrete trucks, blueprints, mud, cranes, lots of noise and, uh, mud, during the last recruiting cycle when Colorado football coach Mike MacIntyre brought recruits to campus. Full Story

Most people don't play guitar like Grayson Erhard does. That's because most people can't play guitar like he does. The guitarist for Fort Collins' Aspen Hourglass often uses a difficult two-hands-on-the-fretboard technique that Eddie Van Halen first popularized but which players such as Erhard have developed beyond pop-rock vulgarity.
Full Story